On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” host Anderson Cooper said that, after the drawdown of immigration officers in Minnesota, there are “thousands” of officers “who probably couldn’t make it on a police force, probably couldn’t make it in the military. Some of them, obviously, have been serving for a long time, but some of them have 47 days of training because of the 47th president.”
While speaking with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Cooper said, “What happens to all these thousands of masked men — we don’t know their identities — who probably couldn’t make it on a police force, probably couldn’t make it in the military. Some of them, obviously, have been serving for a long time, but some of them have 47 days of training because of the 47th president. What happens to these thousands of people? They have to be deployed somewhere.”
Klobuchar responded, “Well, that’s our concern. After they put $75 billion extra into this budget, making them bigger than the FBI, making it bigger than many militaries across the world, they are now unleashing them on other cities. So, I would hope the next follow-up from Director Homan would be the training. I believe we should take the excess money, it should go into local law enforcement. Literally, that $75 billion could pay for three years of those tax credits to protect people’s premiums under the Affordable Care Act, something this administration wouldn’t do. You add to that that the deployment of 3,000 ICE agents in Minnesota cost, at a minimum, $18 million a week, 4 million-some on hotel rooms a week, the cost of the salaries, the lost business that we have of small businesses. And when my colleagues and friends across the country say, what can we do to help now? I say, come to our beautiful state.”
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